Careful Angela, I think your Porsche might be in trouble at next year’s conference.

Indeed, commercial enterprises will serve the interests of commerce. If that means pumping out propaganda, often cunningly disguised as entertainment, for the idea that the rich and powerful who own things like the big media are aristocrats we should naturally look up to and endow with more privileges and let them govern us, so be it.

How can ordinary people make rational decisions when the aristocracy so controls the flow of information like this? How much are we controlled by a carefully built entertainment culture which promotes passivity in the face of privilege?

Your idea that the only opponents of true liberty are the things labelled “state” is laughably out of date. It only really made sense for a fairly short period in the 20th century. Our political ancestors knew better when they spoke of enslavement by “poverty, ignorance and conformity”.

I accept that, until the BBC is privatised, that it has a duty to be forensic in its news - but please do not demand that private media enterprises carry the entire burden of “mispresentation” because governments and politicians are somehow helpless players in this. The government and quango’s PR budgets dwarf most media outlets entire research budgets.

So I find it simply laughable that when media outlets get briefings from public bodies (governments , quangos et al) they are then are supposed to somehow single handedly “discover the truth” buried in page 97 of the document. That’s not how the real world operates.

By all means ask the BBC why it pays Jonathan Ross £6million a year but can’t find the resources to tackle the government over on its “scientific studies” - they are funded by the taxpayer to inform and educate not feed us with Govt proaganda - but dont expect commercial news companies to hold the government to account - thats the job of the opposition parties -and the BBC - and on the conscience of those write the reports and then allow the data to be “spun” by the politicians.

Yes, and so they could if the new variant CJD worked as was a possibility.

You list a whole load of things where that is the issue - scientists say there’s a possibility of something high enough to suggest it would be a good idea to make some preparation for it. That does not meant they are saying it is a certainty.

This is really the issue - too many sloppy media people who don’t understand science, so just don’t see what it means for something to be posed as a hypothesis. Like those silly interviewers who scream at politicians “Give us an answer - yes or no” and get a good reputation for doing that, Paxman or whatever his name is and the like, they can’t see that sometimes there isn’t such an answer. Sometimes the answer is “yes if …” or “maybe 10% chance of yes, but that’s just a crude guess”.

Of course, very few people understand basic probability - despite its crucial nature, which is why arguments on these issues often get nowhere.

When there are so many people who want jobs in the media, why can’t they recruit people who have the basic skills required to do the job? So much of news is science-based that a degree in science ought to be almost mandatory or at least highly desirable. How many journos have one? Almost none. As for journalists of local papers who have any understanding of local government, well, … You might have thought with the unis churning our people with BAs in journalism some of those churned out might just twig that as work on a local paper is a good starting point, and what the council is doing is bread-and-butter local paper stuff, maybe a little knowledge in that area might be an idea. But no, in my experience journos on local papers haven’t a clue on how local government works, which is why they so often just print press releases from the council and yah-booh-sucks comments from the Opposition.

“Libertarians would appear not to have any answers [to climate change]”

Can I ask if you’ve read, and rejected, libertarian arguments on the environment and climate change (regarding property rights and technology, for example) - or are you assuming that all solutions consist of governments responding to “something must be done” and that per se we have no answers? Either way, I hope to feature a few blogs on this in the run up to Copenhagen and, contrary to your assertion, I aim to build on all the good work done by many generations of liberals.

I am not against “green taxes” per se. Am I against stealth taxes dressed up as green taxes - yes. I see little evidence that “green taxes” are being directed to address “green issues” - just filling up the TReasury coffers to be spent on an increasing number of Labour projects. I would not theoretically be against a carbon tax on every item purchased providing this was balanced against lower taxation elsewhere. Am I against even greater invasion of privacy in the name of “climate change” - yes.

Re the Lib Dems - Personally I would like to see the Lib Dem policy give more weight to technological man-made solutions to probable climate change problems. There seems to be very little indeed about it other than a small bit on carbon capture. And of course green taxes being offset by lower taxes elsewhere.

These are my views. I believe they fit comfortably within Liberal values.

The other half of the problem is that every time the scientists say there is a real chance, if not a big chance, of something very bad here, it is written up as “Scientists warn of disaster!” rather than “We need more information on this, urgently!”. The latter is like a shepherd’s boy saying “I saw some droppings a bit like a wolf’s” and everybody shouting “Wolf! Wolf!” without going to see if the droppings are from a wolf. Bad for the shepherd boy’s reputation, possibly fatal for the flock when everybody gets usd to ignoring the shouts, but not the boy’s fault.

As for global warming, the odds are roughly a 1000 to one on that it is happenning and roughly 100 to one that if it is not checked it will eventually be a disaster for humanity. Whatever the rabid environmentalists say, it does not really mater whether or not we caysed what has already happened. What matters for our future is whether we can do anything to stop it. If we can, the case for getting on with it before the warming gets out of hand is pretty obvious. For classical liberals, that is an excellent opportunity to press for the replacement of distorting taxes on income with less distorting ones on the consumption of anything that produces greenhouse gases.